Through the Looking Glass

A chronicle of the absurd, in politics and life

Friday, March 01, 2002

Well, looking all over all that stuff below, it's been a depressing week of postings. Time to step back and
take the long view. How will this all be remembered in
seventy years? Consider the
Harding memorial.

Thursday, February 28, 2002

Techies like to complain about Microsoft products, but some of their
useful features wouldn't be found in anybody else's product. The EU
recently released the text of of a proposed directive allowing for
software patents, and because it was released as a Microsoft Word
document, we know who
last edited the thing --- Francisco Mingorance, a top lobbyist for
the Business Software Alliance.

If that sort of legislative process appeals to you, you'll love the SSSCA. This bill, being
championed by Senator Fritz Hollings (D-Disney) (hearings
today!), would require all "interactive digital devices" to employ
"certified security technologies" which would "protect" digital content.
The definition of "interactive digital device" is as broad as can be
imagined:

The term "interactive digital device" means any machine,
device, product, software, or technology, whether or not included with
or as part of some other machine, device, product, software, or
technology, that is designed, marketed or used for the primary purpose
of, and that is capable of, storing, retrieving, processing,
performing, transmitting, receiving, or copying information in digital
form.

In other words, all computer software would need to have
copyright cops embedded.

Where this gets really fun is the process by which the security
technologies get certified. After the bill gets passed, the
electronics and software manufacturers get a year or so to negotiate
with "representatives of copyright owners" about security standards.
If those negotiations conclude, the Secretary of Commerce is required
by the bill to adopt whatever they come up with as recommendations,
which acquire the force of law. So, in effect, this bill would
explicitly delgate regulatory authority to large corporations.

On the other hand, if a year goes by and the electronics and
software industries haven't knuckled under, the Secretary is
required by the bill to initiate rulemaking which will give
the copyright holders what they want.

Do I exaggerate? Well, slightly --- if the parties "appear to be
negotiating in good faith", the Secretary can grant the electronics
and software industries a six-month reprieve. But only one. Aside
from that, if you don't think it's really that bad, I'd invite you
once again to read the text of
the bill.

Disney thinks this is "an exceedingly moderate and reasonable
approach". It's good to know they're not going to extremes.

Here's a brief roundup of stories that at least present new variations
on the common themes:

An Enron employee's letter to the California congressional
delegation claims that during the California energy crisis,
Enron traders created artificial shortages by artificially congesting transmission lines. I've seen allegations before of
market manipulations by other companies, but this is the first I've
seen of manipulation tied to Enron directly.

While stiffing laid-off employees on their compensation, Enron has
paid its executives yet another round of retention
bonuses. The theory is that the company is paying these people
not to leave --- never mind that some recipients of the first round of $55
million in "retention bonuses" spent most of the time for which they
were "retained" lining
up other jobs --- and some of the biggest winners were the very
folks who wrecked the company in the first place.

Lastly, here's one bit of Jeff Skilling's literally incredible
testimony before the Senate which hasn't been written up in the
stories I've seen. Skilling has consistently defended the company's
financial reports as complete, correct, and transparent. But on at
least one occasion when a reporter asked sharp questions about them,
Skilling was unable
to answer. He didn't understand them himself --- perhaps
understandable in light of the earlier bizarre
exchange with Sen. Boxer in which Skilling, a Harvard MBA, claimed not to know whether
it is proper for a company to use manipulations of its own stock to
alter its financial statements...

It's all a matter of putting the best face on things.
It's as natural as the Pentagon's decision to give movie producer
Jerry Bruckheimer and ABC's entertainment division broad access to war zones to produce a reality show,
but to deny
the same access to ABC News. They just prefer Bruckheimer's
reality.

Reality is a tricky thing, you see. When Dubya recently gave a speech
in Japan, the State Department and several news organizations
thought they heard him say that

for a century and a half now, America
and Japan have formed one of the great and
enduring alliances of modern times.

Which would be a strange thing for him to say, what with all the
unpleasantness around 1940 that got his father shot down over the
Pacific. But, evidently, they were mistaken; in the White House
transcript of the same speech, that sentence reads

for half a century
now, America and Japan have formed one of the
great and enduring alliances of modern times.

They're not like the Clinton administration. They don't lie.
They just do their best to shape the truth.

Tuesday, February 26, 2002

Libertarians argue for a society in which people solve their problems
by making whatever commercial bargains they can, and the government
takes an enforcement role, if that. The more radical among them
suggest that society would be best off without any government at all,
with nothing but private trade to regulate their
interactions.

As it happens, there are large sections of the globe where there
isn't any government, including the "tribal areas" of Pakistan, where
the Pakistani government itself is happy to tell you its laws do not
extend. And sure enough, we find forms
of commerce that most governments in the decadent West would, in
their brute, statist way, interfere with:

Mr. Arbab fingers his prayer beads as he gives a short history of the
girl. Not only is she a virgin, he notes, but she is "untouched,"
meaning that she has not had anal sex with her previous master --- a
common practice. The fact that the girl is "untouched," combined with
her lighter skin and blue-green eyes, makes her particularly prized.

The bidding starts quickly. About 15 minutes into the bidding, one of
the buyers asks for an inspection. The elderly woman removes the girls
tunic, fingers the childs breasts, and then shines a flashlight into
her open mouth to show that she has a good set of teeth. Bidding
resumes with a certain intensity; some of the men can be seen rubbing
themselves.

Of the 15 or so girls sold that evening, only four were "untouched."
All were virgins, because, as Arbab said, "I only buy the best." And
he makes piles of money doing it. Though his agents will buy the girls
for between $80 to $100 at the borders, the price at the auction was
considerably higher. The 14-year-old was sold for 165,000 Pakistani
rupees, or about $2750. I heard it whispered that the girl was going
to Dubai (presumably to become a member of a harem). Others were not
so lucky. Another girl, a tall 18-year-old virgin with long black
hair
and light eyes, was sold to a prostitution ring in Lahore. Though a
virgin, she had been "touched," and so sold for $2450. Although men at
the auction ostensibly are paying for the right to marry the girls,
few if any do. Most of the girls become prostitutes; the lucky become
domestic help.

These arrangements are so much more convenient than state-granted
marriage licenses in a variety of ways:

According to dozens of buyers interviewed, the girls are disposable
--- and most don't live to the age of 30. When asked in what way the
girls are disposable, the men shrug and smile.

The place conforms to the anarcho-libertarian ideal in other ways
as well:

After walking down the steps into the main hall, buyers
are guided to spots on a floor covered with dark-red geometrically
patterned Afghan carpets. There is a foot-high dais in the middle of
the room and a side door at the far end. Pillows serve as seats at
low-slung tables dominated by hookahs ..., pots of green tea, and
plates of dates and pistachios.

The guests --- everyone is a buyer --- gradually fill the room.
... Everyone is asked to leave weapons in the anteroom on the way into
the hall, but from the way some sit, it's clear that there are still
plenty of weapons in the room by the time the auction begins.

How genteel. An armed society is a polite society.

Not to put too fine a touch on it, these are slave markets (which
also, by the way, buy and sell young buys for use as camel drivers).

You'd think this would be one case where even hard-core
libertarians would respect the right of the government to stick its
nose in, if libertarianism has anything to do with liberty. The
liberty of the slaves is clearly at risk here. But the "Johnny
Student" collective on Libertarian Samizdata seems
to have, how shall I say, a more nuanced position concerning the most
famous case of that sort of intervention. They recently described
their experiences in attempting to convince college history
classes that, in their own words:

1. Confederacy is a system of government that gives more power to the
states or local government and less power to the federal or higher
levels of government. America is a federalist society, whereas,
Switzerland is an example of a confederacy.

...

5. After Lincoln's nearly 50/50 election there was a great tension
between the North and the South about the role of the federal
government (Lincoln wanted more federal government, which the
Southerners opposed).

6. The US Civil War started over the role of the state versus the role
of the federal government - not slavery.

And so, in effect, the South were the minarchist good guys.
Perhaps they think Confederate political speeches sounded something
like this ...

Now, this heah conflict isn't really about slavery puh
se. Why, I own three hundred slaves mahself, and I'd free 'em
all tomorrow, 'ceptin' they all like things exactly how they are. I
know because that's what they tell me.

The problem heah is that the govuhnment in Washington City is
claiming the right to regulate slavery. If that can be
allowed, wheah will it stop? What would be next? Federal standards
fo' the purity of drinking water? Oppressive gangs of regulatuhs
swarming over slaughterhouses tryin' to prevent the sale of rotten
meat? A federal agency spending immense amounts of money on some
bizarre scheme fo' "electrical power" in the Tennessee Valley?

Ah know this seems like a vision from a nightmare, but that is where
Federal regulation of slavery might lead. They might even try to give
women the vote. I know it sounds insane, but if the gummint
can regulate slavery, then nothing, nothing else is beyond
the realm of possibility.

...instead of this, from a speech
delivered by future C.S.A. Secretary of State Robert Toombs to the
Georgia legislature:

In 1790 we had less than eight hundred thousand
slaves. Under our mild and humane administration of the system they
have increased above four millions. The country has expanded to meet
this growing want, and Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana,
Texas, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri, have received this
increasing tide of African labor; before the end of this century, at
precisely the same rate of increase, the Africans among us in a
subordinate condition will amount to eleven millions of persons. What
shall be done with them? We must expand or perish. We are constrained
by an inexorable necessity to accept expansion or extermination. Those
who tell you that the territorial question is an abstraction, that you
can never colonize another territory without the African slavetrade,
are both deaf and blind to the history of the last sixty years. All
just reasoning, all past history, condemn the fallacy. The North
understand it better - they have told us for twenty years that their
object was to pen up slavery within its present limits - surround it
with a border of free States, and like the scorpion surrounded with
fire, they will make it sting itself to death.

But does Toombs discuss the primacy of State law vis-a-vis laws
passed by the Federal government? Why, indeed he does, in the very
next paragraph:

All the courts of the United States, Federal and State,
from the Supreme Court of the United States to the Justice Courts of
all the States whose actions have ever come under my notice, construed
this Constitution to mean and intend the rendition of fugitive slaves
by law of Congress, which might be aided, not thwarted, by State
legislation, until the decision of the Supreme Court of Wisconsin held
otherwise, and that decision was unanimously overruled by Northern and
Southern judges in the Supreme Court, and which Court, in the same
case, unanimously affirmed the constitutionality of the [Fugitive
Slave] act of 1850. But these acts were not only annulled by the
abolition Legislatures, but annulled under circumstances of atrocity
and aggravation unknown to the legislation of any civilized people in
the world. Some of them punish us with penitentiary punishment as
felons for even claiming our own slaves within their limits, even by
his own consent; others by ingenious contrivances prevent the
possibility of your sustaining your rights in their limits, where they
seek to compel you to go, and then punish you by fine and infamous
punishments for asserting your rights and failing to get them. This is
the fidelity of our brethren (!) to their plighted faith their
oft-repeated oaths!

So, there you have it, from the (well, a) horse's mouth: a
proximate cause of the Civil War was that the South insisted on the
Federal government's right to preempt State law in the North.

It's true that after the Civil War, many Southerners justified
their actions in terms of States' rights --- because arguments in
favor of slavery as a moral institution had lost their currency. But
the Southron side came to that conviction late. C.S.A. President
Jefferson Davis and vice-president Alexander Stephens pushed
the "States' Rights" line after the war. But before the war,
Stephens famously
declared that Jefferson's vision of slavery as "the rock on which
the old Union would split" was now "realized fact", adding

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite
idea [to the equality of races]; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests upon the great
truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery --
subordination to the superior race -- is his natural and normal
condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of
the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral
truth.

Stephens' speech also enumerated a number of advantages of the
Confederate Constitution over that of the United States. A different
construction of "states' rights" is not among them; the closest he
gets is to point out the weaker power of the Confederate government to
regulate interstate commerce. And as for Davis, when he was leaving
the U.S. Senate, after Mississippi seceded, he paused in his farewell
address, to recount and repeat his advice to aggrieved parties in
Massachusetts when the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was passed: that the
Constitution gave that kind of power to the federal government, that
as long as they stayed in the Union they'd just have to lump it, and
if they didn't like it, they ought to leave it.

When a couple of pomo scholars wrote an article last fall which
implicitly equated the "oppressiveness" of the Western bikini with the
Taliban burqa, they were roundly
derided. And they deserved to be. If they were trying to raise
awareness of the way unhealthy ideals pushed through the media do in
fact drive some vulnerable girls to do stupid,
self-destructive things to their bodies, then they failed; they
only succeeded in making themselves and their cause look ridiculous.
"Johnny Student"'s view of the causes of the Civil war --- that it
was not so much slavery per se, as the power of the federal government
to get rid of it --- is just as warped.

It would be nice to think that libertarianism had something to do
with liberty. But if it does, then "Johnny Student" is awfully
confused...

Monday, February 25, 2002

It seems that a lot of bloggers are belatedly discovering my fine
Commonwealth's current governor, Jane Swift. They know her only as
the woman who upheld
the sentence of the last prisoner in the notorious Fells' Acres "ritual
child abuse" case, twentieth century Massachusetts' answer to the
Salem Witch trials. But she's so much more.

Since Bush nominated the elected governor, Paul Cellucci, to the
vital and important post of Ambassador to Canada, Swift (his former
running mate) has been presiding over the affairs of the great
Commonwealth of Massachusetts with the perpetually befuddled air of a
third grader in a school play who is achingly eager to please, but
doesn't see why her doggy can't join in the fun, and just can't
remember her lines.

Even before acquiring the corner office, Swift entertained the
public with such Stupid
Politician Tricks as the use of a state helicopter for personal
business, having aides from her office babysit her kid (it was
entirely voluntary, she protested; the kid was so cute no aide could
resist!), and a sinecure teaching
appointment at Suffolk University Law School (a very short walk
from the State House) which involved very little work. Her marriage
license application failed to report two of her
husband's three previous marriages, apparently to try to keep her
budding political career from stumbling over awkward questions about
them. Which worked, in a way; nobody cared about the divorces, though
the local press had plenty of questions about lies on a public
document.

As acting Governor, she has raised
eyebrows by commuting three hours each way from her home in the
Berkshires, near the state's western border, refusing to move closer
to Boston, even though this arrangement obviously must be placing a
little stress on a family which includes her well-publicized infant
kid. (She says the commute is working time, since someone else is
driving the SUV). September 11th threw unwelcome light on the
culture of political patronage at Massport, the agency which runs
Logan airport, among other things, and Swift's connections to it..
Her other achievements include a ridiculous
catfight with two members of the state Turnpike authority over a
toll increase, which she wants and they don't; she's trying to fire
them, and they won't go. I actually think she's right about this one,
but the way it has played out in the courts is just embarrassing.

And yet, Swift is only one of many striking characters in
Massachusetts state government. Where she (and her predecessor,
Cellucci, a nonentity who will mostly be remembered for proclaiming
October to be Italian-American Heritage month) created a power
vacuum, the Speaker of the Massachusetts House, the dictatorial
Tom Finneran, has rushed in to fill it.

Finneran has, in recent years, been giving his own state of the
State address, billed as the
"Speaker's address to the citizens of the Commonwealth", to complement
the governor's. Finneran's address generally gets more attention from
people who actually care what state government is going to do, since
Finneran controls the Massachusetts House with an iron hand, and no
legislation can pass without meeting his approval. In public, he
defers to small-d democratic sensibilities by using "the members" as
his royal "we", but members of the House who oppose him in any
significant way generally find themselves pondering their new,
worthless committee assignments in a dank, windowless basement office.

So, for example, when the voters passed a referendum mandating
public funding of campaigns for state office, Finneran's house simply
refused to fund it. A state court recently ruled that the legislature
had to either fund the bill or repeal it. Finneran's response, so
far, has been to pass
a "compromise" bill which would have the effect of providing
some public funding --- enough for the two candidates for
minor state office who had gone through the motions needed to qualify
for funds when none were available, but not enough for, say, opponents
to his pet house members.

Finneran is also a large-D democrat, but he isn't expected to run
in this year's election for governor. Presumably, he has looked over
the flyweights who are already in that field (see John
Ellis's summation), and decided that there's just no point;
whether the corner office goes to the Republican Swift, or to one of
the Democrats, he'll still be able to run state government without
interference from pretty much anybody.

The Libertarian response to all of this (next up, if I really want
to lose readers, Boston's Mayor, "Mumbles" Menino) is to point out
that government attracts people of, how shall I say, slight merit, and
that that's a reason for getting rid of it. They're wrong.

What's right is that people of slight merit are attracted to money
and power. And not just in government. Congressman John LeBoutillier
recalls how
a classmate named Jeff in the Harvard Business School responded when
asked what he would do if he discovered that his company's products
were dangerous. The response? "I'd keep making and selling the
product. My job as a businessman is to be a profit center and to
maximize return to the shareholders. It's the government's job to step
in if a product is dangerous." Jeff Skilling went on to put that
philosophy in practice as CEO of Enron.

The sleazebags will always be with us.
They're an integral part of the human condition.
In the public sector, with
sunshine laws and public record requirements, at least they're easier
to keep an eye on. In Libertopia, with everything in the private
sector, they'd be harder to track.